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Reading Updates
A real game of two halves this weekend! And a lot of catching up from the past month...
Starting with the bad, I finally finished reading Bad Gays: A Homosexual History. I didn't like it! Annoyingly, I was initially really excited to read it (three years ago, when I started reading...) because I'd listened to and enjoyed a few episodes of the podcast, but as a book it felt poorly structured and I really disliked the way it subconsciously draws equivalence between varying levels of 'badness', as if being a Nazi and being mildly kinky are equally worthy of inclusion in this book's bloated, YFIP list-esque chapters. Not a fan.
In the Biggles world, I read Sergeant Bigglesworth, C.I.D., Biggles' Second Case, Biggles of the Interpol and Biggles in the Baltic. I really enjoyed them all, with Interpol being probably the least favourite due to inconsistency between stories, and my favourite being Baltic. I'd been putting it off due to the Evil vS, but it's a really cracking adventure and features such breathtaking insane thrills that I just can't resist. The bit at the end where Raymond admits that everyone thought they'd be dead in a day was truly fantastic, Biggles was SO CROSS. I hope they got at least a few days to unwind after this, but knowing Biggles he probably got involved in bringing down a spy ring while trying to walk in the park.
CID and Second Case were fun adventures as well. I love Bertie becoming an integrated member of &Co, I really do love him, and the drama and whump potential was really good stuff for my id. I do wish the polar bears had been given a bit more play, but to be fair I always feel this way about giant animals in Biggles books. I admit it's been long enough now since I read them that I only have faint memory of the actual plot, but the huge pit of Chekov's land mines was probably the highlight, especially when they vaporised a Nazi.
Finally, I read Hungerstone by Kat Dunn, which was excellent. It pushed me past two of my misgivings, which are that I usually bounce off first person POV (with the notable exception of Rivers of London, and now this!) and also that I haven't always enjoyed ambiguity in fiction. But here it is: an ambiguous gothic novel in the first person which had me up past midnight to finish it. Lenore is a fantastic protagonist, closed off and traumatised and working so very very hard to win a game rigged against her. The point where she snaps is built up to with such fantastic tension that the pay-off had me actually clapping in delight. The structure where nearly every chapter ends with a hook for the next also worked extremely well, to the point I was turning to my partner basically every chapter to say 'You won't BELIEVE what happened NOW'. Extremely readable, slightly haunting, highly recommended.
Starting with the bad, I finally finished reading Bad Gays: A Homosexual History. I didn't like it! Annoyingly, I was initially really excited to read it (three years ago, when I started reading...) because I'd listened to and enjoyed a few episodes of the podcast, but as a book it felt poorly structured and I really disliked the way it subconsciously draws equivalence between varying levels of 'badness', as if being a Nazi and being mildly kinky are equally worthy of inclusion in this book's bloated, YFIP list-esque chapters. Not a fan.
In the Biggles world, I read Sergeant Bigglesworth, C.I.D., Biggles' Second Case, Biggles of the Interpol and Biggles in the Baltic. I really enjoyed them all, with Interpol being probably the least favourite due to inconsistency between stories, and my favourite being Baltic. I'd been putting it off due to the Evil vS, but it's a really cracking adventure and features such breathtaking insane thrills that I just can't resist. The bit at the end where Raymond admits that everyone thought they'd be dead in a day was truly fantastic, Biggles was SO CROSS. I hope they got at least a few days to unwind after this, but knowing Biggles he probably got involved in bringing down a spy ring while trying to walk in the park.
CID and Second Case were fun adventures as well. I love Bertie becoming an integrated member of &Co, I really do love him, and the drama and whump potential was really good stuff for my id. I do wish the polar bears had been given a bit more play, but to be fair I always feel this way about giant animals in Biggles books. I admit it's been long enough now since I read them that I only have faint memory of the actual plot, but the huge pit of Chekov's land mines was probably the highlight, especially when they vaporised a Nazi.
Finally, I read Hungerstone by Kat Dunn, which was excellent. It pushed me past two of my misgivings, which are that I usually bounce off first person POV (with the notable exception of Rivers of London, and now this!) and also that I haven't always enjoyed ambiguity in fiction. But here it is: an ambiguous gothic novel in the first person which had me up past midnight to finish it. Lenore is a fantastic protagonist, closed off and traumatised and working so very very hard to win a game rigged against her. The point where she snaps is built up to with such fantastic tension that the pay-off had me actually clapping in delight. The structure where nearly every chapter ends with a hook for the next also worked extremely well, to the point I was turning to my partner basically every chapter to say 'You won't BELIEVE what happened NOW'. Extremely readable, slightly haunting, highly recommended.
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And I'm very pleased you enjoyed Baltic, because I love it dearly. It's just SO MUCH, non-stop action and also EvS watching Biggles sleep in an extremely normal nemesis manner, nothing to see here.
Given your review, and quite a lot of the other ones on Goodreads, I won't bother with Bad Gays. Also, I looked up the contents page and there appears to be only one woman?!
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RE Bad Gays: It's fascinating because they make some effort to say that it's not just about white men being bad (which is unsurprising even when they're not straight) but then don't back it up at all with the subject selection. I was not convinced that gay people engage with colonialism in a specific way separate from straight people - it just came across that ultimately all white people benefit from racism and can participate in fetishising other cultures, which I didn't need to read a very boring chapter about TE Lawrence to figure out.
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